


the even-numbered pages are the past

by sixpences



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-01
Updated: 2009-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:09:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixpences/pseuds/sixpences
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The art of memory. Post-series, written for xf_pornbattle prompt 'lightning'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the even-numbered pages are the past

The whole country is littered with memories, place names cut out of files and papers and pasted onto road signs, lined up like a war cemetery. It's safer to travel by night. Mulder chews on french fries and flicks the radio between chattering late-night DJs and she winds down the driver's side window to let in the dark, rushing air, the headlights carving out the road ahead just as far as they need to see.

In Connerville, Oklahoma, no-one would recognise them now. It's not her dyed-brown hair or his thrift store sweaters but like they've since shed a layer of skin and found themselves different people underneath, leaving their old selves to crumple and fade in the sun. The Kiveat garage is boarded up, the nails rusted in place. The sunrise spreads pink light around a growing ridge of cloud on the horizon and slowly subdues the coloured lights on the dash. Neither of them says a word as the darkened arcade peels past the window, as Scully turns the car into the same motel.

Mornings are always the same, pulling off their clothes and falling into bed to sleep with the daylight picking out the stains on the curtains, but Mulder stops by the scuffed dresser and stands with the duffel bag of clothes still in his hand, staring into the blank space of the room. His eyes are bloodshot at the edges.

"It seemed bigger before," he says, and smiles very slightly, and she slides her arms around him and presses her cheek against the soft-solid beat of his heart. In bed they curl the sheets into a nest like hibernating creatures, waiting for the prickle of spring.

It's unexpectedly dark when Scully wakes and she sits up to squint at Mulder's watch on the side table.

"It's two-thirty," he says from the other side of the bed. "There must be a storm."

The sound of rain against the door cuts in abruptly and she rubs a hand across her forehead, willing away the grogginess of sleeping all morning. The six am nausea has faded into a dull hunger and she thinks idly about the granola bars that ought to be stashed somewhere among their clean socks, a veritable feast. She has found herself more adaptable than she had expected.

The thin mattress shifts as Mulder slides out of bed, shadows shifting and deepening into the shape of his body, still familiar and still unknown. He has scars she doesn't remember and can't bring herself to ask about.

Thunder cracks through the air as he pushes back one dull orange curtain and leans his head forward against the windowpane. It's dark enough to be night and beyond the parking lot she can see that the streetlamps have come on, little needles of sodium unstitching the rough seams of the sky. There is an expectant stillness, the sussurance of rain, and the silhouette of him at the window like some Jeremiah of the west.

"Come back to bed, Mulder," she says, and he turns away from the window and lets the curtain drop back into place.

"I don't think I ever thought it was a real place, Scully," he says. "Only a few of them were ever real places."

"I know." Nine years have left her with tunnel vision, a myopia where little other than their narrow, two-seater world ever comes into proper focus. The half-light limns Mulder's broad shoulders and his pillow-tousled hair and she feels a familiar tremor along her spine and pushes the comforter away. "Come back to bed."

In the darkness she traces his face with her hands, and when she leans forward to kiss him a flash of lightning paints her closed eyelids red. The thunder follows close behind. His fingers are a thousand gunshots, inkstains, palms remembering the steering wheel, his mouth spilling over with words and silence. In this stuttering gloom she still sees their son's eyes in his face. She touches him to join the flashes of vision together, an imperfect syllabary of the past, of this language that's like breathing. He traces silent consonants on her stomach with his tongue and when she pushes herself down onto him his lips shift around some unknown, unpronounceable word.

Lightning snaps out from the sky, pulling the thunder behind, neat percussion in the white noise of the rain. The road leads out of town towards the highway in short yellow dashes of code.


End file.
